Another Good Writing Tip, I Think I Saw This Somewhere Else Too, But Work On Multiple Things At A Time.

Darcy - Scholars in Tragedy

This is Darcy, another character in my book, Scholars in Tragedy, coming out soon!

Darcy was the model angel, always doing whatever he was told, until he met Clemen, the only wizard he's met since ancient times. They become fast-friends, and Clemen encourages Darcy to question authority. Now, Darcy loves punk-rock, and he's working together with Clemen and the others to save the world.

More character bios to come! Soon hopefully, if i can be happy with any of my drawings of Kara. Hope you all enjoy! Check my page, @evanainsleywriting for updates.

Thank you for reading!!

My best writing tip is to remember that you can do anything. Absolutely anything.

You had an idea that seems weird and unrealistic? Put it in that’s awesome and it’s your book.

Incorrect/unusual use of grammar? Stylistic choice.

I keep finding myself thinking, oh I couldn’t possibly put that in, that would never happen in real life, and then I remember that I am the creator of this world. Anything is possible in it and I can do anything.

I feel like generally people don’t take as much advantage of this as they could. Go absolutely crazy and have fun with it! Do whatever you want! Be as creative as humanly possible!

Clemen - Scholars in Tragedy

This is Clemen, another character in my book, Scholars in Tragedy, coming out soon!

Clemen was born in 1888 to a wealthy family in New England. His life went on normally until he was 16, when he discovers a book of magic and wizardry. He studies the book more intensely than anything in school and eventually becomes a wizard himself, with the power of immortality, and his family avoids him for his differences. He makes friends with an angel, Darcy, and together they try to find a way to save the world from impending doom.

More character bios to come! Three to go!

Check my page, @evanainsleywriting for updates. I will be self publishing Scholars in Tragedy on Amazon Kindle direct publishing early this coming spring. Thank you for reading!!

Blanket - a poem

Look into the sun, view the images he gives you.

The leaves shifting on the ground, is it the wind? Or something more?

The grass, the trees, the clouds the seas.

Can you see them moving? Can you feel them breathing?

I am just a single stitch in the grass blanket that covers the earth.

How magnificent to be a small part of something so grand!

When the clouds are big and light and the tree tops are golden and red, when the sun seems to shine brighter then the day before, I remember my place in all this, my roll in this play.

It is not in words I can name!

An indescribable buzzing reaching deep from my bones rooted deep in the ground and reaching deep into the sky.

I am the tree, I am the earth.

Hear this great song! Hear this ever repeating chorus! This humming produced by my life itself!

It feels like a warm blanket.

Sidney - Scholars in Tragedy

This is Sidney, the protagonist in my book, Scholars in Tragedy, coming out soon!

Sidney was always the weird kid, the one that can't keep friends, the one that always had an air of mystic. As a kid, she would have dreams that seemed too real, flashes of the past and future. As she got older, the strange occurrences only increased, and she is troubled to discover her most terrifying prediction comes true, the end of the world. All she has is an acorn and her friends to help her do something about it.

More character bios to come! I hope you all enjoy! Check my page, @evanainsleywriting for updates. I will be self publishing Scholars in Tragedy on Amazon Kindle direct publishing early this coming spring. Thank you for reading!!

Hello!

I am new here! I don't know how to use the internet!

I made this account to establish a sort of portfolio for my writing, and to let people know about my book, Scholars in Tragedy, hopefully coming out soon!

On here, I hope to publish some of my short stories, talk about books i've liked, and I would also really, really love to discuss philosophy and existentialism!

If any of this sounds of interest to you, oh good! I hope you enjoy it!

Scholars in Tragedy follows Sid, a teenage girl, as she struggles with the existence of the apocalypse, and her place in it. She is accompanied by Kara, her best friend, and Grace, who has a sword. Clemen is a immortal wizard, born in the eighteen hundreds. He is friends with Darcy, an angel. The two of them work together to try and stop the apocalypse. When they cross paths with Sid and her friends, will they be friend or foe?

Excerpt I - Scholars in Tragedy, prologue

A young girl is on the playground during recess. She’s playing a game with some other girls that are sometimes mean to her, sometimes not.

In the game, she is the girls’ little sister, left to follow them around as they have adventures. they don’t let her have any super powers, or be one of the fairy-mermaid-princesses. They don’t let her say anything too loud.

But she plays along anyway, pretending to have fun, wanting to be fun so they would like her, and be her real friends.

Although, she doesn’t worry about them or the game too much, because she knows that she wont be a side kick for long.

She knows because when she closes her eyes for a bit too long, she sees fire and red. The playground, the school building, the classrooms, the houses across the street, burning and crumbling under the orange-smoke sky.

She is there and they are gone. She knows, and they don’t.

The world is ending, is going to end, and she can almost feel what that means.

But regardless, she will cry when she gets home.

Hi! This is the prologue from my book, Scholars in Tragedy. If you are interested, look for it on Kindle e-books this coming spring!

Thank you for reading!

Ghost Warehouse - A Short Story

Here's a short story I wrote a few months ago, it's actually based on a dream I had when I was a kid.

I opened my eyes to find an elderly woman standing in my bedroom. She’s dressed smartly in a gray pinstripe pantsuit with shoulder pads and sensible flats. She wears her gray hair in a bun on the back of her head. She smiles at me when I sit up in bed, her lipstick cracking slightly.

Before I can ask her what she is doing in my bedroom, she waves her hand and two masked guards shimmer into the room. Each is holding a very painful-looking baton.

My mouth snaps shut and she smiles again, this time more pitying.

“Sorry, you looked like you might put up a fight,” she has an English accent.

I try to remember how I got home last night. I remember something weird going on, but my memory was foggy. I think I was scared…

“I’m here to tell you have died and escort you to your afterlife.” She interrupts.

How did I die? Is the first thing I think to ask, but I decide against it.

“What’s my afterlife?” I ask instead.

The woman sighs with relief and the guards shift a bit.

“You will see soon enough. Pack a bag to bring with you. You can bring anything that fits in the bag and nothing more. Your cellular phone will not work where we are going.” She recites as if it’s a script she memorized.

I slowly climb out of bed and put my feet on the ground. I feel much lighter, gravity doesn’t pull as hard when you’re dead. Delete Created with Sketch.

After looking through my closet for a bag, I determined my normal school backpack was the biggest one I could find. I ask the woman, who I assume is the equivalent of the Grim Reaper, if I can go get one of my mother’s huge shopping bags, but she says it has to be one that I own. I didn’t think I “owned” any of my bags, I wasn’t the one who paid for them, but I didn’t want to argue with death.

I empty all of my school things onto the floor by my bed as she and the guards watch me.

“What will I need in the afterlife?” I ask.

“Anything you would need here, minus food and water. Whatever you think could make your stay more comfortable,”

I skip packing clothes, I’m wearing what I’m assuming I died in last night, but I figure since I no longer have a body my clothes will probably never get too dirty.

I grab an empty sketchbook and a mechanical pencil, maybe I’ll want to draw what I see there.

I pick a few of my favorite books, in case I get bored there.

“Will my phone work to play music?” I ask, fearing judgment.

“As long as you don’t need the internet or the WI-FI,” I put my phone and headphones in the bag.

I can’t think of anything else to bring, so I throw in another notebook and pen just for fun. I zip my bag and look at the woman expectantly.

“That’s all you’re bringing?” She raises a thinly plucked eyebrow.

“What do people normally bring?”

“Cherished mementos, nostalgic items, prized possessions,”

I look around my room for anything of emotional value.

I decide on my stuffed bear and my dog’s old name tag. Delete Created with Sketch.

I arrive in the afterlife with no memory of how I got there. The woman is still with me, but she appears to have changed clothes. She’s now wearing a beige pantsuit.

I’m in a very hilly area, with cliffs and rocks overlooking the ocean. California poppies grow among other colorful wildflowers and tall grasses. Butterflies and bees travel between the array of flowers. The ground is made of small pebbles of rock and dirt. I can feel them crunch under my shoe. The sky is spotted with fluffy white clouds. I feel the sun on my skin, it’s the perfect temperature. I find myself with a sense of calm.

The woman starts walking and I follow her.

“Are you god?” I ask her to fill the silence.

“Not in the way you think. I don’t love all people like in your fun little stories, I don’t even like you much. It is simply my job to watch over this planet and its life.”

I don’t feel like asking questions anymore.

Ahead of us, I see a large gray warehouse, looking very out of place in the natural landscape. It has a singular narrow window wrapping around the perimeter of the building, and a singular door with one of the guards from earlier standing in front of it.

As we approach the building, the woman nods to the guard and he unbolts the heavy-looking door.

“What is this place?” I ask as the guard nudges me through the door and I step onto the concentrate floors.

“Your afterlife.” The woman smiles and the door is closed in my face.

I turn to look at the warehouse. The windows are too high on the walls to see anything out of, just to let in sunlight. Looking down toward the opposite side of the building, I notice I can’t see the back wall, the hall seems to go on forever. Many people are speckled around the floor. Some of them have created makeshift tents and shades out of blankets or clothes. Some of them look bothered, but others seem to be enjoying themselves. Laughing with their friends, or just smiling while staring at the wall. I recognize many of the people here… everyone seems to be near my age, and, I’m troubled to say, from my school.

As I begin to wonder what this means, a guy I knew in elementary school, his name is Alex, walks up to me. He’s smiling unsettlingly.

“Hey! Did you just get here?” He asks in a surprisingly friendly way, considering how much of a jerk he was when we were kids.

“Yeah,” I reply cautiously. “Do you know what’s going on? When did you get here?”

He appears to think for a moment.

“Late last night, man, was I shaken up.” He shakes his head.

“And you’re not anymore?”

“Not really? Theirs just something about this place… it makes me feel… calm.” And he’s smiling again.

Putting this information aside, I press on.

“What happened last night that killed us both? I can’t remember,”

“ya know, I’m not sure. But what does it matter anyway? It’s in the past,” he motions for me to follow him and sit near what I’m assuming is his bag.

“I guess so… maybe it’s a coincidence.” I sit down, crossing my legs. This place doesn’t seem all that bad.

A few days later, my Friend Amanda comes through the door.

“Amanda! How are you doing?” I smile and give her a hug when I first see her.

“Well, I died,” she seems a bit confused.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I joke. She almost laughs.

“You seem so happy,” she seems suspicious. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing much, we mostly just sit around and talk. Nothing but a huge warehouse full of ghosts!” I laugh, thinking myself the height of comedy. “I think it’s something about knowing your eternity. Like, I know for a fact this is where I’ll be for the rest of time, so it takes the pressure off. Even though it’s not the wonderful oasis many people hope for, it’s still kind of wonderful.” I shrug.

She smiles back at me. We go sit down and I re-introduce her to Alex.

50 years later

All my old friends from school are here now. I’ve learned in my time here that the occupants of the warehouse are determined by age and location. Everyone here lived in my town and was in my age group. Even if they died when they were 60 instead of 16 like I did, I still see them as how I remembered them. I wonder how they see me.

We find out from one of the guards that in another 43 years will be what they call a cleaning day, they kick everyone out to mop the floors or something. While they’re doing that, we can go wander the earth and do whatever we want until they’re finished, all the while completely invisible to the still-living people.

I think that this “day” is more like “multiple days” because I can’t fathom how they could clean this entire warehouse in only a day. I once tried to walk to the other end of the building and I had to turn around after walking for 4 days without seeing anyone else. Everyone seems to be crowded by the only door.

The guard recommended that on the cleaning day we all meet with our families or whoever we want to see that isn’t in our age group.

I wonder where my parents will be.

43 years after that: Cleaning Day

We’re all laughing about something as we came out the door.

The flowers are the most vibrant thing I’ve ever seen. The smell of the ocean on the wind fills me with excitement.

We take turns sliding down a banister with smiles stretching off of our faces. I’m laughing with Amanda and all my other old and new friends. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been, and the idea that later today I’m going to see my family for the first time in 93 years makes me even happier. As ghosts, we are invisible to the living, so we can do practically whatever we’ve ever wanted to do on earth. A bunch of us are going to sneak on airplanes and travel to all the places we’ve ever wanted to go. I’m going to go meet my parents at my old house, I wonder who’s living there now. After that, I want to explore the deep ocean. It’s not like I can drown, or get crushed by the increased pressure, but I’ll probably bring a flashlight.

After that, I’ll go back to the warehouse with everyone else and wait until the next cleaning day or the end of the universe.